Ties That Bind
by Quantize
Summary: Only one man can take his place during his absence, but finding him might not be so easy. (One-shot inspired by the recent teaser trailer.)


This was inspired by the recent teaser trailer. See end for notes.

 _-Start-_

It was dark.

It was always dark in this place. Even the light emanating from his skin did little to illuminate these black spaces.

The light itself was a mystery. He didn't know where it came from or why it was there. It made him feel like an archangel from the old stories, though he had no business being an angel. It also made him feel vulnerable, as though millions of eyes lurked just out of sight, watching.

He'd tried to control it, the first few times. Tried to make it dim or brighten. But the effort was futile. The light was constant – a steady glow that lit him in shades of pale blue and silver but had little effect on the abyssal world around him.

He needed the light, however much it made him feel like a fraud and a sitting-duck. It was the only thing connecting him to the rest of the world. When he came here the material world fell away. Without the light he would be lost forever within the gloom, and he couldn't let that happen. Not while the world refused to change.

The man he sought was proving much more elusive than he'd hoped. The man's connections to the living had thinned over the years, fraying around the edges as their memories faded and the pangs of love and loss lost their sting. In contrast the threads connecting living people were thick and strong, overpowering the diaphanous fibers that reached out to the dead.

He'd tried following Lyle's connections first. Surely the brother, the last living relative, would have the strongest connection. But Lyle's path had diverged from his brother's long ago. They hadn't had much contact after social services had placed them in separate foster homes, and though they both cared for the other the pathways between them had eroded. Still he'd tried to follow it. He'd had to abandon the attempt, finding himself continually pulled away by guilt, forced toward another road. He'd never doubted that he'd done the right thing by killing Anew, yet he'd regretted that things had to end the way they had, and he found himself drawn again and again to her link.

Frustrated, he had looked to Tieria, but found that he could not traverse those pathways. They were foreign to him, and even to the ELS that had shown him the original connections. These pathways were harder than the ones between humans or ELS, more like steel tubing than fine thread. They slid away from him like a greased pipe might fall from his hand, staying frustratingly out of reach. He could touch them, know with whom they connected, but could not follow where they led.

So he'd turned to Allelujah. The man proved to be much more complex than he'd realized. The trails forked haphazardly, more branches sprouting forth than he'd found anywhere other than the ELS themselves. Intrigued, he'd followed the series of paths connected to Marie. Her network was larger still, and it twined inseparably with Allelujah's, creating a maze of pathways that was too complicated for him to navigate on his own. It had taken him an immeasurable time to extract himself from the forest that they had made, and he'd feared to go back. He couldn't afford to get lost. Not before he found what was lost.

Next, he'd turned introspectively to himself. His own network had a stronger connection to the man than did the others. It was frayed from the years since his death, but still mostly intact. This was unsurprising after all he'd learned. The man appeared in his dreams, it only made sense that the strands connecting them would be stronger than most.

He'd started to follow the path but was stopped by a pang of fear. The further he travelled the more nearly-forgotten connections from his past pulled at him. There were ghosts down his paths with stronger claims to him than the man sought. Spirits that he was not yet ready to visit. Faces that haunted his dreams, keeping their connections strong despite the years, much as the man had done. He would face them one day, but not now.

Finally he'd found a connection as strong as, or perhaps strong than, his own. Feldt had cared deeply for the man, and the proximity of his doppelganger had kept the memory strong. Yet the man's threads were strongly tangled with his own. Her feelings for them were deeply intertwined, almost inseparable. At first the proximity caused him to loop back to his own network, coming back to himself as if was a visitor in his own mind. It was disorienting, and disconcerting but not unbearable. With practice he found he could avoid the pulls that led to himself and began to make his way toward his goal.

He knew when he was getting close. The frayed edges of the path began to come back together. The flow of emotions changed – rather than feeling Feldt's emotions toward the man, he began to feel his toward her. It was strange, feeling the presence of a man so long gone.

And then it was as though he could feel the man in front of him.

"Lockon! Lockon!"

He called out into the darkness, hurrying forward. Something began to take shape in front of him, the first thing he'd seen other than darkness. A soft voice spoke out from the gloom.

"What's that? A voice?"

And now he could see him. Lockon was standing in front of him, facing away into the darkness. Relief and regret washed over him, followed by hope.

"Over here. It's me. Setsuna."

Lockon turned to look at him, and he knew he'd found the right man by the patch that covered his right eye. His left eye widened in surprise.

"No. That can't be. You're not the Setsuna I knew."

"It's me. I am Setsuna F. Seiei, a Gundam Meister of Celestial Being."

Lockon still looked skeptical.

"How are you here? Why did you come?"

"Lockon Stratos. No, Neil Dylandy. I need you to live. To survive. To live the life that I no longer can."

"What are you talking about?"

He raised his hand, holding it out to Lockon. "Please. Come with me."

He watched as Lockon hesitated, doubt written plainly across the man's face. But still Lockon raised his arm, taking the offered hand in his own, and let himself be pulled back along the pathways, back to the world that he had so long ago left behind.

 _-End-_

Firstly, I probably got the translations for the conversation from the trailer horribly wrong. I apologize.

Second, the 'come with me' part was not in the trailer.

Third, the whole premise of this came from a comment I read that someone had taken the conversation to mean that Setsuna was asking Neil to take his place with CB because he couldn't be there. After looking at the picture of the characters together (Graham, Letizia [or however you spell his/her name], Lockon, Setsuna, Allelujah, Saji, Tieria) I got to thinking - all of the characters other than Setsuna that became ELS hybrids only had parts of their body covered in silver. So what if Setsuna transferred his consciousness into a new ELS body, and brought his human body back to earth for Neil? Strange, I know. But that's where this story came from.


End file.
